Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are a great way to reach a lot of people at once. Many people using social media for business see it as a way to push content outward at an audience. But social media is also a great tool to get information from your audience. The most effective way to do this is through authentic conversations directly with your audience inviting their feedback, but there are also a number of tools that can tell you a lot about your audience–even if they aren’t always typing replies to your content. Read on for ways to learn more about your customers and audience using some readily available and free social media tools.

Bitly

Bitly is a free link shortener that also tracks and tallies clicks to links. Use it to shorten long links and then to see how popular your content is. After you create a Bitly link, it is saved to your link library. You can then go back to your library to see how many clicks your link has gotten. If you use the same link of your Facebook and Twitter pages, Bitly will tell you which site clicks came from and even if people are accessing that link from a shortened link someone else has created. By learning more about the clicks your content gets, you can see what is of interest to your customer and audience. You can also see if some of your content drives more traffic on Facebook or Twitter giving you insight into where you customers are and how they behave.

Facebook Likes

When a fan gives your content a like, it means they support what you have to say or offer. It’s not a big commitment like a comment on your post, but it’s something to pay attention to. Try out different types of content on your Facebook page, such as offering a deal or sharing a tutorial and see which piece of content receives more likes. This can tell you the type of content and even products your customers are looking for. Do you have fans that always like your content? Reach out to them with a special offers for being such a good fan. Remember, Facebook friends can now easily see when someone likes a post, so its also a great promotion.

Twitter Retweets

Twitter retweets are a step above an action like a favorite or alike. A retweet shows that your fan supports your content so much that they are happy to be associated with it. This also means that your customers want to share your content with their friends. Every time someone retweets your content, note what type of post it was. This will tell you what kind of posts are likely to spread the word about your business in the form of retweets.

Facebook Insights

You can dig deeper into your social media activity in Facebook Insights. These are offered to anyone who manages a Facebook page. Dig into all the categories of your insights to learn the demographics of your fans, what time they’re online and who they are. You can even go so far as to target your posts based on demographics, allowing you to test what you learned from your likes and insights.

Social media isn’t a one way conversation or just a way of sharing information. Use social media to learn more about your customers and potential customers and offer them more of what they like!

Interested in Earning Some Extra CASH? Become an Affiliate for GDI – It’s EASY!

Frequency and Timing

Decide how frequently you will be posting on your Facebook page. Too much posting means you won’t get seen by many people and not enough posting means people may forget about your page. Test out some different posting frequencies to find out what works best for you. When you post multiple times per day, how many times can you post before your posts don’t get as high of reach? Two? Three? See how many people you are serving with each post and adjust your frequency. When you’ve landed on the best frequency for you page, try to stick with a schedule for posting. What times of day do you reach the most people? Try to post at those times to ensure your biggest reach and engagement.

Scheduling

Maintaining your Facebook page doesn’t mean being on it all the time. Facebook makes it easy to schedule posts in advance. Consider scheduling all your posts for the week on Sunday night. Want to change the text of your post or when it will go live? Simply navigate to Scheduled Posts and choose to reschedule, edit the text, or even delete if necessary.

Answering Messages

In your weekly Facebook stats, Facebook now puts a focus on response rate and time of your messages. This means Facebook is now paying attention to the quality of your customer service by seeing how quickly you can respond to inquiries to your page. Be sure to respond to messages quickly to rank better with Facebook. You can set your alerts so that you get an email whenever you get a message, so that you don’t have to to go Facebook each time to search for any activity.

Managing Comments

If you’ve created an open and inviting Facebook page, you will begin to get comments on your posts from fans. While it is possible to adjust your settings so no one can comment on your posts, it is recommend that you leave the comments on. Comments allow you to hear directly from your customers. Try not to edit or delete comments even if they aren’t always positive about your company as they provide important insight. Consider crafting a comment policy to follow so if you do get a comment you feel the need to delete, you can explain to the fan why it was removed.

Page Admins

If you need help managing your Facebook page, add in additional admins. These can be your co-workers, downline, or friends. These people can manage the page in addition to you.Worried they might say the wrong thing? Facebook shows page admins who posted each status so you can know how your admins are behaving and helping to manage the page. To add a new admin, navigate to your page Setting > Page Roles > Add New Person.

Managing your Facebook page can take time and attention. But with the right approach, tools, and people you can manage your page and make it work for you and your business.

Start Earning Extra Income From Those Great Marketing Skills! Become an Affiliate for GDI. Click Below to Learn More…

Content marketing is one of the most popular forms of marketing used today. While it may seem like a new idea, content marketing has existed in one form or another for a long time. Content marketing simple refers to creating and sharing valuable content to attract new business and engage customers with your product or offering. You probably do this everyday by sharing anecdotes about your product in person. Using several easy tactics, you can take that content you’re sharing offline and take it to your website or blog to create powerful content marketing for your business. Read how.

Testimonials

If you’ve ever provided a service to a customer or sold a product, you have the opportunity to get some great testimonials. Think of your past customers or go through emails to find out who was truly satisfied by your product and services. Reach out to the people and ask if they will provide a short testimonial–a brief anecdote touting why the bought/ love/ use your product–and share it on your website. Testimonials are effective in the form of text, video, or even audio. Consider having satisfied customers send you a short voice memo from their smartphone and then share it on your site in the form a SoundCloud or other audio link.

Tutorials

Is there something your new customers should know about your product or service? Share it in the form of a video tutorial. Simply turn on your web camera or smartphone and show or explain to your customers how to use your products. Get the most out of your content by breaking up longer tutorials into shorter videos and sharing them over time. This will give visitors a reason to keep coming back to your website and will make it more rich with unique content offerings.

Industry Updates and News

What’s going on in your industry? What is the newest product from the competition or what new technology is available to you. Share this on your website to build out your content and to demonstrate to potential customers your knowledge of the industry. You don’t have to spend a lot of time on this content, you can search for industry news and then share a brief summary and link to the source with the full information.

Listicles

As you click around the internet, you’ve probably consumed many listicles. Listicles are bits of content shared around the internet that come in list form. Think something you might see in sites like Buzzfeed, such as “21 Reasons You Know You’re Meant for Internet Marketing” or “15 Website Mistakes Everyone Makes.” This content is great for audiences and creators alike. These lists are easy to create, no need to for long drawn out paragraphs, and easy to consume online. Longer paragraphs turn off many readers, so ditch the long-form in favor of a listicle.

Variety of Media

No matter what content you decide to create–testimonials, tutorials, listicles or all three, share it a in a variety of media forms. Share audio, video, text, even GIFs in your content. You can even break up things like listicles with great video content. The more variety you can add to your site, the more interest and eyes you will get to and keep on your website.

Content marketing doesn’t have to be intimidating. Thinking about the stories you can tell about your business and sharing them to engage more customers makes for very powerful content.